Gossip Should Have No Friends

QUALITY CONTROL: Two years after its grand opening, Portland's well-regarded Quality Pictures Contemporary Art is closing. A Sunday, Jan. 18, email to a few of the gallery's artists indicated that "the economic storm has claimed QPCA as yet another casualty." Owner Erik Schneider, a transplant from the South, kept his Atlanta accounting business operational as a way to keep up his revenue stream during the ebb and flow of starting up a gallery in Portland. Whether Schneider will stay in town or return to Atlanta, and whether he will keep his hat in the local art arena, is not clear. He has not returned any of WW's phone calls or emails. "I don't think buying art is all about the money," he told WW in January 2007. "In fact, it's probably 90 percent about the image and 10 percent about the money. But," he added ominously, "don't ever forget that 10 percent."

NO TIME FOR LOVE, DR. JONES: Indiana Jones is meeting George of the Jungle in Portland. And they will fight autosomal recessive metabolic disorder. As first reported on WWire, the Oregon Film Video Office has confirmed reports that Harrison Ford and Brendan Fraser will arrive in Portland this April to begin shooting Crowley, a medical drama about a father and a researcher who team up to find a cure for Pompe disease. The movie, directed by What Happens in Vegas auteur Tom Vaughan, is based on a 2006 nonfiction book by Wall Street Journal reporter Geeta Anand, The Cure: How a Father Raised $100 Million—and Bucked the Medical Establishment—in a Quest to Save His Children. Michael Fine at the Portland Mayor's Office of Film Video said today that a pre-production team from CBS Films is currently scouting locations. We're betting on OHSU. It has a tram.

BOOKED: And back to bad news: If the locked doors during a Friday lunch hour weren't indication enough, a manager of Twenty-Third Avenue Books confirmed last Friday that the Northwest Portland independent bookstore is closing: "We're in the process," she said, removing several days' worth of FedEx missed-delivery stickers from the store's front door. Scoop told her we were sorry to hear it. "Me too," she said.

CLARIFICATION: In regard to our Scoop last week about Pollstar's global ranking of concert promoters, Portland actually has four, not three, of the top promoters in the world. Portland's Mark Adler, who owns the Aladdin Theater, also made that list at No. 79.

WWeek 2015

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